2014 Practice Squad Thread

Brady6 said:

Very disappointing that Halapio, Thomas, and Gallon were all so unimpressive that we did not even want them on the practice squad. Terrible draft picks.

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Sixth and seventh rounders, by definition, aren't that highly thought of. Sure, it's nice to find a diamond in the rough but isn't it a good thing that not very good players aren't making this team?

Mack Herron said:

Steve Balestrieri ‏@SteveB7SFG 6m
Cowboys have cut Jemea Thomas, wonder if the Patriots may entertain bringing him back to the PS

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Mighty tough year to make the Pats as a CB, especially with Butler and Swanson looking so good as UDFAs. Not to mention the perfectly serviceable Justin Green (who ended up on IR, unfortunately).

Oswlek said:

Of four 6th/7th round picks, one made the roster, one made another roster and one they want to bring back. For an elite team that actually had a net plus FA, that is fine. Even good.

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In the 2012 and 2013 drafts, we have 13 of 14 players make the 53-man roster. Also Halapio was not are usual sixth round pick, he was #179 aka the third pick of the sixth round, on a team with question marks at both guard positions him not even making an expanded practice squad is a disappointment. Especially if you consider that, we traded down in the draft to get the extra pick that we used to draft Halapio.

I do not see the net plus free agent, Revis, Browner, and LaFell are the UFA we signed that made the team, we lost Blount, Talib, Fletcher, Mulligan, and Spikes.

manxman2601 said:

Sixth and seventh rounders, by definition, aren't that highly thought of. Sure, it's nice to find a diamond in the rough but isn't it a good thing that not very good players aren't making this team?

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I have said this several times, but I will repeat it once again, we are not talking about making the team we are talking about making the practice squad, and expanded practice squad at that.

Brady6 said:

In the 2012 and 2013 drafts, we have 13 of 14 players make the 53-man roster. Also Halapio was not are usual sixth round pick, he was #179 aka the third pick of the sixth round, on a team with question marks at both guard positions him not even making an expanded practice squad is a disappointment. Especially if you consider that, we traded down in the draft to get the extra pick that we used to draft Halapio.

I do not see the net plus free agent, Revis, Browner, and LaFell are the UFA we signed that made the team, we lost Blount, Talib, Fletcher, Mulligan, and Spikes.

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Because because the guys added are better than the guys lost, not because of a sheer numbers game.

Brady6 said:

I have said this several times, but I will repeat it once again, we are not talking about making the team we are talking about making the practice squad, and expanded practice squad at that.

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And you are still mistaken. Even early 6ths are basically priority UDFAs. Your expectations are not consistent with historical results.

Or would you have rather the team kept those guys over Butler, Devey and Thompkins simply by virtue of being draft picks?

mayoclinic said:

Yup:

2013: +Buchanan, -Beauharnais. Unless you count that 7th traded for Blount.
2012: +Dennard, +Ebner, -Ebert.
2011: -Markell Carter, -Malcolm Williams. Also -Lee Smith, taken in the 5th round.
2010: +Brandon Deaderick, -Kade Weston, -Zac Robinson, -Thomas Welch (traded 2 7ths to move up for him), -Ted Larsen (should have stuck, though - that was a mild mistake)
2009: +Julian Edelman, +Myron Pryor, -Jake Ingram, -Darryl Richard

And then there was 2007: -Oscar Lua, -Mike Richardson, -Justice Hairston, -Mike Elgin, -Corey Hilliard, -Justin Rogers. 0 for 6.

Probably not far off from the league average. 6th and 7th round picks are really pretty much equivalent to UDFAs, just the teams get to lock up their rights instead of trying to sign them on the open market. Almost every team cuts late round picks, and almost every team has UDFAs that make the 53 man roster.

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I also harken back to Matt Cassel, Tully Banta-Cain and David Givens.

Brady6 said:

I have said this several times, but I will repeat it once again, we are not talking about making the team we are talking about making the practice squad, and expanded practice squad at that.

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There are only ten spots on the PS and we've filled them all. Where those ten players came from doesn't really matter. Is there that many players taken in those two rounds that you'd desperately want on the PS? Looking through the players selected, there's only about ten for me and a couple of those are QBs.

Brady6 said:

I have said this several times, but I will repeat it once again, we are not talking about making the team we are talking about making the practice squad, and expanded practice squad at that.

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I think that it's not unreasonable to hope that if a team drafts a prospect, then they should at least end up desiring to have that player on either the 53 man roster or the PS. That may not happen because of injuries, because the player doesn't make it through waivers, or because the player chooses to sign with another teams PS where there is a better chance of eventually making the squad. But I think that if the team that drafts a player chooses to let them go entirely, then they made something of a mistake in their initial evaluation of that player. That's not the end of the world and it's not surprising given the crapshoot that is the NFL draft. The team seems to make up for those misses pretty effectively through UDFA hits and pickups from other teams.

manxman2601 said:

There are only ten spots on the PS and we've filled them all. Where those ten players came from doesn't really matter. Is there that many players taken in those two rounds that you'd desperately want on the PS? Looking through the players selected, there's only about ten for me and a couple of those are QBs.

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As well as the fact that a player like Bequette wouldn't normally be eligible for the PS, so calling it "expanded" in an effort to make them not returning even worse is disingenuous.

manxman2601 said:

It might be interesting to see what percentage of sixth and seventh rounders made teams and/or practice squads and how much higher than 25% it is. Might have a go at it tomorrow.

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I'd be interested as well, though how many are still in the league in, say, year 3 might be a more meaningful measure.

Whether a draft pick makes the initial 53 depends a great deal on the depth of the team's roster, and how much the management is swayed by a "sunk costs" devotion to their draft picks. (Prime example: Joe McKnight vs. Danny Woodhead.) The more willing a team is to judge young players based on their performance rather than their pedigree, the more you should expect them to jettison draft picks.

Brady6 said:

In the 2012 and 2013 drafts, we have 13 of 14 players make the 53-man roster. Also Halapio was not are usual sixth round pick, he was #179 aka the third pick of the sixth round, on a team with question marks at both guard positions him not even making an expanded practice squad is a disappointment. Especially if you consider that, we traded down in the draft to get the extra pick that we used to draft Halapio.

I do not see the net plus free agent, Revis, Browner, and LaFell are the UFA we signed that made the team, we lost Blount, Talib, Fletcher, Mulligan, and Spikes.

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We absolutely went net plus in FA.

I would say that Just Revis and LaFell puts us at net plus. Add in Browner(even though I'm not that big a fan of him, to limited for me) and I think it's absolutely clear that FA made us better this year.

Talib was awesome when healthy. But honestly that wasn't too often. Even if he played many games he had a bunch of games where he wasn't very good because he was injured. Mulligan is the JAG of JAGS. Spikes is an artifact of the olden days and would probably have been our 4th linebacker, in a league where you most of the time have 2 linebackers. He is just to slow and bad at pass coverage. Hightower may get a lot of flack here. But he clearly better than Spikes in pass coverage(not hard to be). Fletcher was nice on special teams. But not a huge loss. Blount was good. But we still have Ridley who is better in my opinion. No exiciting pounder backup though.

All in all I say that we clearly got better in FA.

The draft is hard to judge now. But Halapio wasn't a very good pick.

Our first 3 looks good though. Garoppolo has looked good in pre season and should be a very capable backup. Maybe even our future QB as our current GOAT isn't getting any younger(too far in the future to say. But atleast he hasn't made it look like that's impossible). Stork overall looked good in the 4th pre season game and should take our starting center spot before mid season. I love the Easley pick just from his college tape. Exactly what we have needed on our DL for a few years now. Will be very exciting to see him play.

As many others have said. 6-7th round players are basically UDFA quality players that you get to choose early. Still sucks that Halapio wasn't even PS quality on a team where we doesn't have the best (quality) depth at guard.

Bequette is still the biggest mystery though. How that guy can continue to make the team one way or another, while never doing anything on the field is just mind boggling.

Belichick had 90 players only a few short weeks ago.

He now has only 53.

37 of those couldn't even make the 53. Hence Belichick made 37 mistakes.

And of those 37, 27 of them couldnt even make the practice squad (and we're talking about the practice squad here). Thus Belichick made 27 HUGE mistakes.

Did I sum up some people's thinking succinctly enough or do I need less snark?


EDIT: Not meant to be a serious critique of Belichick, just an exaggeration of his critics thinking in letting players go.

patchick said:

I'd be interested as well, though how many are still in the league in, say, year 3 might be a more meaningful measure.

Whether a draft pick makes the initial 53 depends a great deal on the depth of the team's roster, and how much the management is swayed by a "sunk costs" devotion to their draft picks. (Prime example: Joe McKnight vs. Danny Woodhead.) The more willing a team is to judge young players based on their performance rather than their pedigree, the more you should expect them to jettison draft picks.

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I don't think too many teams use the "sunk cost" argument with respect to 6th and 7th round draft picks. Those seem to be considered pretty expendable as rookies.

Brady6 said:

I have said this several times, but I will repeat it once again, we are not talking about making the team we are talking about making the practice squad, and expanded practice squad at that.

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I should say that I wasn't especially happy with the way they drafted this year but it's time to move on. There's a whole bunch of Terrence Fede's and Zach Kerr's out there waiting to be discovered and for me to become overly invested in.

Oswlek said:

Because because the guys added are better than the guys lost, not because of a sheer numbers game.



And you are still mistaken. Even early 6ths are basically priority UDFAs. Your expectations are not consistent with historical results.

Or would you have rather the team kept those guys over Butler, Devey and Thompkins simply by virtue of being draft picks?

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We should just stop having the draft then. You sound silly saying that in a forum for a team that draft the GOAT QB in the sixth round of the draft.

For the record you can read my thoughts during the draft, I was against the picks on the day of the draft, and I am still disappointed with them now.

http://www.patsfans.com/new-england...draft-day-3-rounds-4-7-thread.1109990/page-45

I would rather have them make better draft choices, and the players you named do not matter because for the 10th time in this thread alone we are talking about them not making the practice squad, not them missing the 53 man roster.

manxman2601 said:

I should say that I wasn't especially happy with the way they drafted this year but it's time to move on. There's a whole bunch of Terrence Fede's and Zach Kerr's out there waiting to be discovered and for me to become overly invested in.

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It is definitely time to move on. That's something that BB does best. For every Jemea Thomas and Jon Halapio there is a Nate Ebner, Chris Jones, Danny Woodhead, Kenbrell Thompkins and Malcolm Butler. Once and awhile there is even a Julian Edelman. The trick is to keep churning the bottom of the roster until you find talent that sticks, and to not get overly invested in what could have been.

Brady6 said:

We should just stop having the draft then. You sound silly saying that in a forum for a team that draft the GOAT QB in the sixth round of the draft.

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This is facepalm worthy.

B6, you are demonstrating a lack of awareness of historic success rates on late round picks, and resorting to a straw man doesn't in any way change that.

Oswlek said:

As well as the fact that a player like Bequette wouldn't normally be eligible for the PS, so calling it "expanded" in an effort to make them not returning even worse is disingenuous.

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I called it expanded because it is expanded, so stop reaching, 10 is 2 more than 8 which = expanded.

It is great that you want to refer to late round picks as the equivalent to priority UDFA but they are not, they are draft picks, and great that you want to suggest because Bequette is eligible for the practice squad it is not expanded but that is not true because the practice squad still has 2 more spots. Disingenuous is taking things that are reality and trying to spin them to justify your position on something.

Always find these arguments somewhat silly as in the absence of some type of longitudinal study of all draft picks across the NFL makes any conclusions presumptuous..

The reality is most teams make mistakes on draft picks, make mistakes on UDFA's and trades.. overall we have had 13 winning seasons, despite what seems to be a feeling on ineptitude on the part of BB...

Oswlek said:

This is facepalm worthy.

B6, you are demonstrating a lack of awareness of historic success rates on late round picks, and resorting to a straw man doesn't in any way change that.

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Straw man, you are labeling draft picks as priority UDFA and saying that 10 spots instead of 8 is not an expanded practice squad, you might want to consider some self-reflection. As I said, 13 or 14 picks made the team in the past 2 drafts, so to have 3 times that in just this draft alone not only miss the 53-man roster but also miss the practice squad that indicates that it was poor draft choices. When a player spends 4 months with your organization and you do not even have interest in letting him join your practice squad, you made a poor decision drafting him, and if you asked Belichick, I am sure he would own it and say it was a bad decision. Comparing our failures to other failures or historical failures does not excuse or justify the failure, the historical misses were failures just like these are failures.